ESSENTIAL CINEMA: MAN OF ARAN
by Robert Flaherty 1934, 76 minutes, 35mm, b&w. Flaherty's third major
film portrays the lives of a family of fisher folk on the Aran Islands
off the coast of Galway, Ireland. Flaherty selected this location and
subjects because of their isolation as the westernmost outpost of
European civilization. In addition, the daily struggle between the
islanders and the sea perfectly suited his interests and concerns. The
scenes at sea are breathtaking. "His passionate devotion to the
portrayal of human gesture and of a man's fight for his family makes the
film an incomparable account of human dignity. Better than anyone,
Flaherty knew how to show the true face of Man." �Georges Sadoul

ESSENTIAL CINEMA: HOLLIS FRAMPTON
ZORNS LEMMA 1970, 60 minutes, 16mm, color. "A major poetic work. Created
and put together by a very clear eye-head, this original and complex
abstract work moves beyond the letters of the alphabet, beyond words and
beyond Freud. If you don't understand it the first time you see it,
don't despair, see it again! When you finally 'get it,' a small light,
possibly a candle, will light itself inside your forehead." �Ernie Gehr
& HAPAX LEGOMENA I: (nostalgia) 1971, 36 minutes, 16mm, b&w. "Nostalgia,
beginning as an ironic look upon a personal past, creates its own filmic
time, a past and future generated by the expectations elicited by its
basic disjunctive strategy." �Annette Michelson "In nostalgia the time
it takes for a photograph to burn (and thus confirm its
two-dimensionality) becomes the clock within the film, while Frampton
plays the critic, asynchronously glossing, explicating, narrating,
mythologizing his earlier art, and his earlier life, as he commits them
both to the fire of a labyrinthine structure; for Borges too was one of
his earlier masters, and he grins behind the facades of logic,
mathematics, and physical demonstrations which are the formal metaphors
for most of Frampton's films." �P. Adams Sitney

CIRCLES OF CONFUSION: A HOLLIS FRAMPTON FILM RETROSPECTIVE PART 5
Los Angeles Filmforum and Khastoo Gallery are delighted to present
CIRCLES OF CONFUSION, a five-screening series of films by Hollis
Frampton, from January 21 to February 7, 2010, with guest scholars and
artists at each program to discuss his works and their influence on
later artists. email suppressed; www.lafilmforum.org Tickets:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/95584 Introduction by David James
(USC) Gloria, 1979, 9.5 min., sound Zorns Lemma, 1970, 60 min., sound

ESSENTIAL CINEMA: GENET/ROBERT FRANK & ALFRED LESLIE
Jean Genet UN CHANT D'AMOUR 1950, 26 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent. Jean
Genet's poetic expression of male eroticism pitted against the confines
of prison cells and a homophobic state�a powerfully resonant work that
explores individual freedom and the laws of desire. Robert Frank &
Alfred Leslie PULL MY DAISY 1959, 28 minutes, 35mm, b&w. A largely
spontaneous experiment, arranged in 1959 by Robert Frank along with
Alfred Leslie. They enlisted the participation of Jack Kerouac, who
offered in place of an original screenplay a stage play he'd never
finished writing, "The Beat Generation." The plot is based on an
incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn. They're
raising a family and trying to fit in with their suburban neighbors, and
one night they invite a respectable neighborhood bishop over for dinner.
But Neal's Beat friends crash the party, and that Marx Brothers-like
scenario is the closest thing the film has to a storyline.

ESSENTIAL CINEMA: GRANT/JACOBS & FLEISCHNER
Dwinell Grant COMPOSITION #2 CONTRATHEMIS 1941, 5 minutes, 16mm, color,
silent. "An attempt to develop visual abstract themes and to
counterpoint them in a planned, formal composition." �D.G. "Austere and
chaste combinations, with subtle manipulation of structure, density and
rhythm."�William Moritz STOP MOTION TESTS 1942, 3 minutes, 16mm, color,
silent. A self-portrait. COLOR SEQUENCE 1943, 3 minutes, 16mm, color,
silent. "Pure solid-color frames which fade, mutate and flicker. A
research into color rhythms and perceptual phenomena." �William Moritz
Ken Jacobs LITTLE STABS AT HAPPINESS 1959-63, 18 minutes, 16mm, color.
Featuring Jack Smith. "Material was cut in as it came out of the camera,
embarrassing moments intact. 100' rolls timed well with music on old
78s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where
suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy
was our achievement as well as breaking out of step." �K.J. Ken Jacobs &
Bob Fleischner BLONDE COBRA 1959-63, 35 minutes, 16-to-35mm blow-up,
b&w/color. Featuring Jack Smith. Preserved by Anthology, with the
generous support of The Film Foundation, The National Film Preservation
Foundation, Simon Lund and Cineric, Inc. "BLONDE COBRA is an erratic
narrative � no, not really a narrative, it's only stretched out in time
for convenience of delivery. It's a look in on an exploding life, on a
man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation
and consumed with American 1950s, 40s, 30s disgust. Silly, self-pitying,
guilt-strictured and yet triumphing � on one level � over the situation
with style� enticing us into an absurd moral posture the better to
dismiss us with a regal 'screw off.'" �K.J. Total running time: ca. 70
minutes.

MAN RAY ON FILM
In conjunction with the exhibition ALIAS MAN RAY: THE ART OF REINVENTION
at The Jewish Museum, Anthology will be screening a program of the films
Man Ray created or worked on during the course of his career. A
trailblazing figure in 20th-century art, Man Ray (1890-1976) revealed
multiple artistic identities over the course of his career � Dadaist,
Parisian Surrealist, international portrait and fashion photographer �
and produced many important and enduring works as a photographer,
painter, filmmaker, writer, sculptor, and object maker. Best known as a
photographer, Man Ray in fact moved from one medium to another as he
defied aesthetic boundaries. Like his fellow Dadaist and close friend
Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray took delight in playing games and confounding
expectations. With his steadfast independence and his need to explore
every artistic avenue, Man Ray forged a vision that changed the very way
art was conceived. ALIAS MAN RAY: THE ART OF REINVENTION will be on
display through March 14, 2010 at The Jewish Museum, located at 5th
Avenue at 92nd Street. For more information, please visit:
www.thejewishmuseum.org. Very special thanks to Andrew Ingall & Jennifer
Mock (The Jewish Museum). Man Ray LE RETOUR ? LA RAISON (1923, 2
minutes, 16mm) ?TOILE DE MER (1927, 13 minutes, 16mm) EMAK BAKIA (1927,
18 minutes, 35mm) LES MYST?RES DE CH?TEAU DE D? (1929, 27 minutes, 35mm,
with French intertitles) Fernand L?ger with Dudley Murphy BALLET
M?CANIQUE? (1924, 19 minutes, 35mm. Preserved by Anthology Film
Archives.) Ren? Clair & Francis Picabia ENTR'ACTE (1924, 22 minutes,
35mm) Marcel Duchamp with Man Ray ANEMIC CINEMA (1926, 7 minutes, 35mm)
Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

WHEN IT WAS BLUE
(Jennifer Reeves, 2008, USA, DigiBeta, 60 min) Jennifer Reeves's epic,
years-in-the-making When It Was Blue presents an experience of a world
that is both visceral and fleeting. Photographed in 16mm over many years
in various waters and terrains, an elaborate montage connects diverse
ecosystems spanning from the northeastern USA, to Iceland, Canada's
Pacific coast, New Zealand and Central America.
http://www.nwfilmforum.org/live/page/series/1138

AN EVENING WITH DARA BIRNBAUM
Dara Birnbaum in person! Thirty years before the ubiquitous YouTube
mashup, artist Dara Birnbaum hijacked television imagery in a series of
coolly ironic videos that recontextualized pop cultural icons (Wonder
Woman, Kojak, Laverne and Shirley), TV grammar (inserts, two-shots,
wipes), and genres (soap operas, sitcoms, game shows) to reveal their
ideological subtexts. Birnbaum described her videos as late-20th-century
"ready-mades"--works that "manipulate a medium which is itself highly
manipulative." Now renowned as a pioneer in televisual appropriation,
she is currently the subject of a major retrospective that began at
S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium, and will tour to Museu Funda��o Serralves in
Porto, Portugal, later in the spring. This evening, Birnbaum will
present an overview of her practice, with examples from her seminal
early videos (Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978-79; Pop Pop
Video: General Hospital/Olympic Speed Skating, 1980), music videos and
commercial spots (Airbreak for MTV Inc., 1987), gallery installations
(Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission, 1989-90), large-scale,
interactive outdoor pieces (Rio Videowall, 1989), as well as her latest
works. Dara Birnbaum, 1978-2010, USA, multiple formats, ca. 90 min (plus
discussion).

NMC: LIVE CINEMA SUMMIT
The Live Cinema Summit is a one-night-only showcase of ten national and
international artists/artist collectives working in the emerging field
of real-time audio-visual performance, and will feature performances by:
Noisefold, Barbara Lattanzi, Sabine Gruffat & Bill Brown, Robert Martin,
Jon Satrom, Potter-Belmar Labs, DataIRJ, Black and Jones, jonCates, and
Alessandro Imperato as well as several Columbia College students. The
event begins at 5pm, and features a full line-up of back-to-back live
cinema performance-demonstrations with break-out discussions and plenty
of room for dialogue. Note: This evening only, trolleys complimentary
Columbia College Chicago (CCC) will be continually transporting to/from
the Hyatt starting at 5:30-9pm | makes stops at all CCC galleries and
the Conaway Center.

GDR UNDERGROUND FILMS
1983-89/1997, 97 minutes, video. In German with English subtitles.
Includes films by Helge Leiberg, Gino Hahnemann, Cornelia Schleime,
Cornelia Klauss, Via Lewandowsky, Thomas Frydetzki, Claus L�ser, Tohm di
Roes, Thomas Werner, and Ramona K�ppel-Welsh. Though the State had a
monopoly on film production in East Germany (the German Democratic
Republic, or GDR), it was not absolute. An underground film scene made
up of painters, poets, musicians, and performance artists flourished
from the 1970s-80s outside official channels. This program features a
selection of ten Super-8mm films from this fascinating and provocative
movement, many of whose members � including Helge Leiberg, Via
Lewandowsky, and Cornelia Schleime � are now leading figures in the
international art world. "It's amazing (and gratifying) to realize that
such 'subversive' films were made in the GDR." �Amos Vogel, FILM AS A
SUBVERSIVE ART

75 YEARS IN THE DARK: A PARTIAL HISTORY OF FILM AT SFMOMA
In 1937, Grace McCann Morley set up a screen and some chairs in the
rotunda of the War Memorial Veterans Building (SFMOMA's first home) and
showed films: D. W. Griffith, Walt Disney, The Jazz Singer, All Quiet on
the Western Front, and the first ever Movietone newsreel featuring
George Bernard Shaw. She believed that film, the 20th century's very own
visual art form, should have a place in a museum of modern art. From the
beginning, it's been an eclectic and inclusive mix: high- and lowbrow;
shorts and features; fiction and documentary; studio, independent, and
artists' films; video and digital media. For our anniversary, we invited
three guest curators to explore film in the context of the history of
modern visual arts and assemble programs from three successiveeras. In
Programs 1, 2, and 3, Scott MacDonald, one of the country's foremost
film historians, looks at 1937 through 1960. Steve Anker, dean of the
School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, covers
1960 to 1985 in Programs 4 through 6 (screening in March and April).
Former SFMOMA Curator of Media Arts Benjamin Weil selects from 1985 to
the present in Programs 7 through 9 (May). The Europeans: Creating a
Context The Smiling Madame Beudet, Germaine Dulac, 1922, 35 min.; Study
No. 7,Oskar Fischinger, 1931, 3 min.; Rain, Joris Ivens, 1929, 15 min.;
Composition in Blue, Oskar Fischinger, 1935, 4 min.; Carmen, Lotte
Reiniger, 1932, 11 min.; A Colour Box, Len Lye, 1935, 5 min.; The
Vampire, Jean Painlev�, 1945, 9 min.;Swinging the Lambeth Walk, Len Lye,
1940, 3 min. For more information:
http://www.sfmoma.org/events/series/1319

ELECTROMEDIASCOPE
"The film and videos in 'Shifting Frames of Reference' navigate new
narrative pathways and inventive cinematic experiences without relying
on text or dialog. Instead, framing, cinematography and editing are used
by these artists to emphasize more liminal and connotative forms of
observation and empathetic awareness at the thresholds of perception. Lu
Chunsheng and Seoungho Cho's video works examine and call into question
local experiences that ultimately have to do with how we know and
re-imagine the world, and how our bodies know and respond to both inner
and outer space. Ken Kobland and Ernie Gehr explore beauty and the
pleasure of shifting visual perceptions of places that have been
constructed and inhabited over time." �Patrick Clancy. "Ideas of Order
in Cinque Terre," Ken Kobland (USA), 2005, 32 min., digital video.
"Horizontal Silence," Seoungho Cho (South Korea), 2003, 8:31 min.,
digital video. "ws.2," Seoungho Cho (South Korea), 2004, 8:06 min.,
digital video. "I Left My Silent House," Seoungho Cho (South Korea),
2007, 8:51 min., digital video. "Before the Appearance of the First
Steam Engine," Lu Chunsheng (China), 2003, 35 min., digital video shown
on DVD. Program continues on February 19 and 26.

PERSONAL CINEMA SERIES - DAVID BAKER
In his second one-person program at Millennium, NYC artist David Baker
will give a magic lantern presentation with an accompanying reading from
related surrealist texts (15 min.). He will screen four digital film
works: FOLK FORMS (Iwerks Analytic) (11:42 min.-2009), SOTTO VOCE (6:00
min.-2009), EGYPT 8MM (Grisaille) (20:27 min.-2009), AB OVO (10:41
min.-2009). "The sorcery of an "inverted anthropomorphism" as it
reverberates in analogous forms will be the subject of this evening's
presentation. In prelude, a magic lantern demonstratio�n will be given �
opals, agates, gemstones and minerals (to discern aleatoric
calligraphies played out patiently over thousands of years), then
optical illusions, anamorphosi�s through the prism of a dissident branch
of 1930's surrealism. With The Writing of Stones by Roger Caillois as
Baedeker-resemblances, hidden recurrences, impossible scribblings in
nature will be set next to digital film works." - D.B.

ESSENTIAL CINEMA: UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE
by Marcel Hanoun 1958, 68 minutes, 16mm, b&w. In French with no
subtitles; English synopsis available. "Based on a true incident, the
film chronicles the wanderings of a woman and child looking for work and
lodging in Paris. This is the only plot, and Hanoun has little interest
in embellishing it with background and motivation: he never even makes
it clear, for example, whether the woman is the child's mother, guardian
or companion. UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE is, more than a narrative, a formal
stylistic exercise so rigorously disciplined and understated that it
makes the visual asceticism of Robert Bresson seem almost Fellini-esque
by comparison." �TIME

LOS ANGELES FILMFORUM PRESENTS KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES BY YVONNE
RAINER
Los Angeles Filmforum presents KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES Part 5 (of 8)
of Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective At the
Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas, Los Angeles Over
the course of our 2009-2010 seasons, Filmforum is proud to present a
full retrospective of the media works of Yvonne Rainer. One of the most
significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, this is
the first full retrospective of her films in Los Angeles. Please note
that Rainer will not be present at this screening Admission $10 general,
$6 students/seniors, free for Filmforum members Advance ticket purchase
available through Brown Paper Tickets:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/95589 KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES
(1976, 90 min., 16mm, color) Rainer continued her preoccupation with the
contradictions between public and private personas with this story of a
female lion tamer from Budapest who comes to New York to become a
choreographer.